Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (17 page)

As we walked away from the stables, we passed a skinny hellspawn with blood-red skin and a scorpion’s tail. A drunken harlot hung on his arm. When he saw me, he cocked his head and squinted his yellow eyes.

I walked on.

“Do you know that fiend?” said Janneke.

“Never saw him.”

“He seems to know you.”

“Ignore him.” I could think of half a dozen reasons why the hellspawn might recognize me, but none of them made me want to talk with him.

It’d been a long time since my devils spilled through me and into the world. They were free of me, and I was free of them.

Sometimes I wondered what mischief they were perpetrating, but mostly I tried not to think about it. I liked the idea I was a real boy, not just a pony for my devils to ride around the world—and definitely not a gate to Hell and the other place.

“There’s something you aren’t telling me.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. “You’re the one who wants to keep things professional. Hell, you won’t even take off that helmet. Talking to you is like talking to an iron golem.”

She sighed and pulled off the helm. Beads of sweat rolled down her face. She looked left and right, then behind her. It finally hit me. She wasn’t wearing the helm because she expected an ambush. It was her disguise.

“Someone’s looking for you?”

“No.”

I gave her my I-don’t-buy-it face.

“It’s nothing to worry about.”

“That woman at the meeting post. You knew her.”

She sighed again. “Former colleague.”

“She got friends?”

Janneke nodded.

“Friends that look like that?” I pointed.

Walking toward us were two women, a red-headed Varisian and the Chelaxian we’d seen earlier. They wore swords at their hips, and both had the same kind of shield on their arms. Like Janneke, they wore mismatched armor, but I was starting to see that some pieces each of the three wore came from the same set.

Janneke turned around. “Dammit.”

Three more women approached from the other side, long red cloaks flaring behind them. Two wore mismatched armor, but the tall one in the middle had the whole silver-gray suit—including an unpainted version of Janneke’s helm. I bet that was how the Gray Maidens looked before they disbanded.

The tall woman took off her helm. Her short hair was thick and black, with a white streak on either side. She’d broken her nose more than once. She handed her helm and shield to the women at her sides and walked toward us alone.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Janneke shoved her crossbow and helm into my arms and stepped forward.

The two women circled each other like prize fighters, hands loose at their sides. Janneke had a good four inches on the other woman, but somehow she didn’t seem any bigger.

“Kaid,” said Janneke.

“Some of the girls have been hoping to see you again,” said Kaid. “I told them you weren’t stupid enough to show your face in Kaer Maga.”

“That shows how smart you are.”

“Are you back to turn in your armor?”

“Did you finally hire someone big enough to take it from me?”

“You always were a conceited, insubordinate—” Kaid grabbed Janneke around the waist and lifted her off the ground. I dropped Janneke’s gear and braced for a fight, but Kaid spun her around and set her down again. “—goat-lover! I’m surprised you haven’t traded it in for Hellknight armor.”

“There’s no need to be insulting.” Janneke pounded Kaid on the back. It looked friendly, but the sound echoed off the nearby houses, and those didn’t look like tears of joy in Kaid’s eyes.

The other women relaxed a little, but the one holding Kaid’s helmet gave Janneke the stink-eye.

Kaid nodded at me. “Who’s the shaved dwarf?”

“Hey, now.” If that’s the way Kaid talked to her friends, I could understand why her nose was broke so much.

“This is Radovan. He’s touchy about his height.”

“I’m plenty taller than a dwarf.”

“I’m working for Radovan’s boss. Radovan, this is Faceless Kaid Brandt, my commanding officer during the queen’s reign.”

Kaid spat. “That Dis whore’s daughter.”

Janneke spat to show she agreed with that sentiment. I spat so as not to get left out.

“I see a couple of new faces,” said Janneke.

“You know Cosima, Belle, and Stiletto,” said Kaid. She took her helm back to the Chelaxian, Stiletto. I liked that name. Kaid nodded at the Garundi. “This here’s Danai. She joined us after a raid in the Bottoms.”

The Chelaxians and the Varisian looked as us like we were three-day-old trout. The Garundi bowed and touched a blue dot painted on her forehead. I tipped her a wink, but it didn’t take. She looked right through me.

I picked up Janneke’s stuff and gave it back to her. She scoffed at me for dropping it. Kaid led us a few streets away to a tavern. We sat down to three porter ales while Kaid’s women stood guard. Janneke and Kaid said things like “long time” and “not the same” and other harmless stuff. It was enough to make me relax for a minute.

Kaid raised her mug. “Steel and gold!”

“Steel and gold!” we agreed.

“Tell me you aren’t still hunting Shoanti for five gold a head,” said Janneke.

“Not when something better comes along. We had a good run through the Undercity last winter. You wouldn’t believe the things that live down there.”

“Tunnel worms?” I asked.

“And worse things,” said Kaid. “Much worse things.”

“I prefer hunting two-legged prey,” said Janneke. She looked over at Danai, who stood guard like a seasoned veteran. “And I don’t mean capturing escaped slaves.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, and my expression told Kaid as much. She just shrugged. “We take the work that pays. And you came to Kaer Maga for a reason. You’re on the hunt, aren’t you?”

Janneke nodded. “If you and the girls aren’t busy, maybe we could cut you in for, say, twenty percent.”

“One-fifth? I’ve got more than thirty women in the company.”

“Your cut would be sixteen hundred,” said Janneke. “That’s a lot of Shoanti heads, and all you need to do is locate our target. You find him, we’ll capture him.”

“Her,” I said. “The boss saw through the disguise.”

Janneke rolled her eyes. “All right, ‘her.’”

“What’s to stop me from collecting this bounty myself?” said Kaid.

“Apart from the fact that I haven’t told you who he—
she
—is, I can think of three reasons. One, it pays in Korvosa.”

“I hate that city.”

“It’s different now. Better, for the most part. Still, I don’t think they’d welcome you except to a dungeon cell.”

“I like it fine right here in Kaer Maga. What’s the second reason?”

“You don’t want to cross the man who’s paying me. He’s a powerful wizard.”

“Sorcerer,” I said.

“Whatever. He’s not the kind of employer you want to disappoint, and he’s got another sorcerer traveling with him.”

“Wizard,” I said. “That one’s a wizard.”

“Drink your drink,” said Janneke.

“What’s the third reason?” said Kaid.

“The bounty pays well only for a live capture. Not exactly your specialty.”

“You make a good point. Tell you what, make our cut one-quarter. You need to check with your employer first?”

“No, the bounty’s mine. He just wants to question him—
her
—first. One-quarter it is.”

They punched each other over the heart and clasped hands. “Deal.”

“The subject’s name is Zoran, or Zora. She uses disguises to break into the homes of wizards and steal enchanted objects. We think she’s looking for a buyer in Kaer Maga.”

“That’s a good bet,” said Kaid. “But it doesn’t narrow things down too much. I can think of a dozen places in Downmarket and the Promenade where someone might unload that sort of thing—and dozens more throughout the city.”

“I know it won’t be easy. But with more than thirty women in the band, you can cover a lot of territory. Don’t try to take her—and definitely don’t kill her—just let me know when you’ve spotted her.”

“In that case, you’d better take this back.” From her belt pouch she dug out a silver whistle on a chain and passed it over.

Janneke showed it to me. “This is why we want Kaid’s Band for this job.” Without explaining further, she hung it around her neck.

Kaid and Janneke drained their beers and ordered another round while I nursed mine and listened to their conversation. I concentrated on remembering the names of merchants and fences they knew and the places they figured on staking out. Pretty soon it was like I wasn’t even at the table. Kaid and Janneke were talking like partners who’d worked together for years.

The boss and I had moments like that away from home and the nobility. Once another aristocrat showed up, though, it was back outside the tent for me and Arni. The boss called both of us his bodyguards. Mostly I didn’t mind, and I knew he didn’t mean it in a bad way, but it was a reminder that in Chelish society I ranked farther below a count than I did above a dog.

With Lady Illyria the boss had someone who could talk both magic and high society. Maybe I should have been happy for him, even if the two of them weren’t exactly cozy since the boss called her out on conjuring ghouls. Maybe I was just jealous.

Maybe I needed to spend more time with Arni. He still looked up to me.

9

The Therassic Spire

Varian

For days I haunted the labyrinthine avenues of the Therassic Spire, a towering repository of lore nestled in the Highside Stacks of Kaer Maga. The library housed countless ancient texts, including one of the greatest collections of Thassilonian lore in existence. It was one of the best possible places to seek knowledge of the runelords.

Much of the time I spent browsing, pausing now and then to ponder the logic of a system that placed bawdy tavern songs beside chronicles of the saints. Previous visits had taught me that a subtle method lay beneath the seeming chaos, but I had yet to comprehend it. Now was not the time to spend unraveling that particular mystery.

Fortunately, the venerable librarians could guide visitors unerringly to shelves devoted to any subject, from the reports of Varisian naturalists to the poetry of ancient Vudrani philosophers. They had already led me to a trove of chronicles about the runelords, including some of the oldest records I had ever perused.

My heart pounded when I first saw an unfamiliar language etched on bronze plates. The tarnished sheets had worn thin over the ages. Because my sorcerous spells inclined more toward war than divination, to decipher the script I depended on my dwindling wizard spells. Thus, I spent a morning alternately inscribing riffle scrolls and retching into a bucket in my room at the Seven Sins before returning to the library. There I released a scroll allowing me to apprehend the meaning of any language. Unfortunately, sifting through records of crop production, road expansion, births, deaths, and tax collection did little to expand my existing knowledge, but perusing them allowed me to organize what I had already learned of Zutha and his domain.

The runelord reigned over Gastash, a region now held by the orcs. In ancient days, Gastash served as the breadbasket of Thassilon, exporting food to all the other regions. Selling to both sides in times of conflict, Zutha profited from every war between his fellow runelords, none of whom dared threaten his territory for fear of starving their own troops.

On a few points I might have admired this lord of a bountiful land. Ancient scholars speculated that Zutha was the original subject of one of my favorite aphorisms: that the quill is more powerful than the blade. Among the rulers of Thassilon, Zutha was known for scholarship, diplomacy, and exquisite penmanship. If his was the hand that composed the
Kardosian Codex
, I could attest to the latter virtue. The scythe was his sigil, although with his many rings and magical Azlanti stones he could raze villages with a gesture or render armies to dust with a glance.

In defiance of natural mortality, Zutha performed the rituals necessary to become a lich, but not the emaciated mummy popular in Avistani art. A massively corpulent man in life, he retained his obese stature in death, continuing to feast and stuff a body that no longer needed to eat. Reveling in his gluttony, Zutha never dined on the same meal twice. As the last of his humanity evaporated, he turned his appetite to “meal-slaves,” indulging his cannibalism with victims from every tribe of Golarion.

I noted certain parallels between Zutha’s chronicle and my own life, although most were common to the noble class. The gluttonous curse from the
Kardosian Codex
was troubling. The circumstances of my own extended life troubled me even more. I had lived as long as Benigno Ygresta, yet rather than succumb to old age I felt more vigorous—if perhaps not as fit—than I had in thirty years. The divine source of my rejuvenation—the heart of a celestial dragon, given freely as a reward for valor—bore no resemblance to the occult art of necromancy, but I could not help wondering whether I would resort to the same methods Zutha had employed if the alternative was death.

Since I had paid the exorbitant entrance fee, the venerable librarians guided me through the twisting avenues of six great floors of tomes, compendiums, dictionaries, codices, and books of all varieties. The history of the runelords had been a popular subject in recent years, especially among Pathfinders and other explorers. They cautioned me that previous visitors might have mislaid some of the volumes for which I searched.

This news encouraged me. I dared to hope that I was not alone in seeking the missing portions of Zutha’s
Gluttonous Tome
. When I noticed upon my third day of research that someone had disturbed the volumes I had set aside for further study, I realized I had a rival for the information. There are no coincidences.

Thus, whenever I heard another approach, I concealed myself and spied upon him. Usually the intruder turned out to be one of the librarians escorting a guest to the desired materials. Others wandered the stacks in an effort to comprehend the repository’s organization. The library’s holdings were vast and varied, but not always selective. One might as soon happen upon a fawning biography of a living merchant as a chronicle of Azlant. The librarians were known to shelve the great Chelish operas beside cheap romances of the sort Lady Illyria concealed behind her fan.